Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

City Hall for a while, but we got that figured out. And it is now 6.32. So first on the agenda is administrative comments.

Ms. Ainslie? Thank you, Chairman. So we had the July 7 Council meeting last week. Yes, sir. Oh, I'm sorry. I was just looking. Okay, so the last time the commission met was June 9th. So we've actually had two council meetings since then. So we had June 16th. New business items that evening were all approved unanimously. 2101 Meadowview SUP. That was for an accessory structure. I'm stretching my memory right now, so planners chime in if I say something that's incorrect. Chalk and Steel SUP, if you remember, this was the Billiards Place on Killett Parkway. Alpha and Omega Chiropractic, SUP, that's an existing chiropractor office in Old Town, just relocating to a different spot in North Old Town. And then 1756 Highland Drive, this was a variance request in Highland Terrace, similar to others that have been before the commission. So then skipping to last week, Council, Old Business, we had three items that had been tabled all the way from May, which is a little unusual. 112 West Hill Street SUP. This was the amazing hair salon. It's that rather small structure near Shotzi's over in Old Town. That was approved with the condition that the SUP was good for two years. So then they want the applicant to come back. That was approved 501. Um, the preserve PD, which was the big, um, item on the agenda that evening, a lot of discussion, a lot of, uh, feedback from the public. I think we ended up with over 200 emails, um, letters, et cetera, from, from residents, um, ultimately was denied six to one. And so then of course the related fluff item was also denied, uh, new business that evening. We had the plat for 92, 97 Indian null. If you remember, this was Two lots combining into one over-two-acre lot at the end of Indian and Old Trail, and they were abandoning that bit of right-of-way that went across the north portion of both lots. That was approved unanimously. 1920 Winter Lane SUP, another accessory structure also approved. Norma Lane flat, that was a two and a half acre lot or so, subdividing into three 36,000 square foot lots at the corner of Norma Lane and Johnson, also approved unanimously. And then we have the 118 West Olive Street SUP. This was to expand the office for Bluegrass Legacy Group over kind of near the poor shack. He's already operating, has been for three or four years and just wanting to expand his business. So that was also approved.

We have to consider the minutes for May 26th and June 9th. And everybody had a chance to look at those. Any additions or corrections still?

No, I'll abstain from June 9th because I was absent. Just so you know ahead of time.

Okay. Alright. to pull up from consent. Tips for Debra to abstain from one. You're right. Which we can do. It's a simple motion.

I just wasn't there. Okay.

I've always had practice. I think it's easy enough to pull it from consent.

Thank you for reminding me.

Okay, and then item E1 tonight, and we have four special use permits, but E1 is 912 Keller-Smithfield, And Ms. Zimmerman, walk us through that, please.

Of course. This is a specific use permit for a 2,259-square-foot detached accessory building with an average height of 18 feet. The proposed structure is to be used for residential storage, workshop garage, and recreational space. They're not planning on running any kind of business out of it. There are two SUV triggers for the structure, the first to exceed $1. 1,200 square feet in the SF 36 zoning district, and the second for the height of the structure to exceed an average of 15 feet. Again, that average height is 18 feet. It's designed to match the materials of the main home and will be located behind the main home and within the setback requirements for the zoning district, and we also have not received any public feedback or response.

Okay, any questions?

I just think it's, I just want to ask for clarification because it's come up in a couple of meetings with FCPs, particularly on height. The UDC isn't stating that we don't allow people to have success restructures that are over 15 feet, correct? It is just a permission that it's more of a, hey, you need to get our thumbs up before you do this sort of thing, instead of I write.

Yeah, so it doesn't prohibit accessory structures from being over 15 feet in height. It's just kind of the separation between staff approval and council approval. So if this structure was 1,100 square feet and average height of 15 feet, we wouldn't be here because it would be a staff approval. But even if it was 1,100 square feet and then an average height of 16 and 1 half, that's beyond the scope of what staff can approve because the UDC says you can't exceed an average height of 15 feet without an SUP for an accessory structure. So it kind of gives people the guideline on how you can stay within what's allowed by right in your zoning district. If you want to do something that's not, then it's a different, somewhat more lengthy process. Got it.

I'd like to point something out, though. If you make a structure dimensions to that structure than if it was 1,200 square feet. It's got to be bigger in some dimension. The bigger the dimension is, the higher the roof is going to be for the same pitch. Because it's got farther to go. So it is natural when I look at it that a bigger accessory structure would be over 15 feet. Because if you take 1,200 square feet, say you do a 30 by 40, it's going to be a four car garage. You've got a 15 foot to the peak, so depending on what pitch you have, you end up around 15 feet. Rough math in your head. Well, as soon as you make that bigger, it's got more to go. It's going to be higher. It's just math. So that doesn't mean you should prove it or not. I don't care about that. But it shouldn't be a surprise to us when the larger accessory structures also require a height variance. It's just math.

See that this building height, though, was 29 feet. No. The maximum building height is approximately 29 feet 6 inches, as shown in the construction documents.

The thing that caught me on my eye was it looked like it had a fireplace or a chimney on the front. And a chimney is not usually in a garage.

And that may be where it gets to the 29 feet.

That is true, they do have the chimney shown on the elevations of the site plan. We measure peak height by the average of the base plate and the peak of the roof, not chimneys and other articulations like that. Second paragraph.

Building design.

Yes, so they put in, you're correct, well, sorry. The maximum building height is described as 26 feet 6 inches in the narrative letter, and that's because they were in accounting for that chimney.

But again, we've measured... That's a two-story structure. Or more than a two-story structure.

Well, it is.

It could very easily be one story, maybe with a loft or whatever. And maybe, I don't know, this doesn't have an attic in it. He's not going to store stuff in the attic. He's just, but if you have vehicles in there, it's probably more than an 8-foot ceiling, maybe 12, 14 feet.

If I could have seen 15, 16, I'm just wondering about the 26th.

Yeah, if you look at the elevations, you can see those measurements. The 26 feet is in reference to the peak of the chimney.

Can we back up a little bit to history, if you don't mind? 15 feet, is that because we're in a flight

I don't know. I've never heard any reference to it being related to flight path, but it's been in the code for over 10 years. I suspect it's more trying to manage accessory buildings being truly accessory to the main home. Your main home should be taller, bigger, you know, whatever than your accessory structures in most scenarios. Now, there's people that have agricultural property, and so a barn that exceeds the size and the height of your home may be appropriate. That's what I think probably drove the 15 feet, but it's an assumption and a guess. I don't know for sure.

We certainly allow houses and other buildings to be way more than 15 feet. So it's not a flight plan, flight path kind of thing. It's 35 feet for single-family houses.

to touch on a specific word that you said that kind of was the reason I asked my question. You used the word variance, and that's not what they are applying for. A variance is someone asking for a deviation from the UDC, and an SEP is just something that they're allowed to do with permission versus allowing to do it by right. And we have specific, the instructions vary differently for how we're to consider a variance request versus an SEP request. So that's kind of my filter of it. They're not looking, they're essentially looking for permission to do something that is allowed, just as a process for it, versus a variance where they're looking, they're asking for permission to not follow a law. You see the difference? than 15 feet, that would be a variance. It's like, well, we want to do 18. It's like, okay, well, we'll give you a variance. But this is like, you need permission to go above 15. That's what this is. So to me, it's very different in how to approach it.

them to do something that we allow they just need to come by so they don't go and put up a cell phone tower in their yard essentially if it helps the way the code reads is the height of an accessory building shall not exceed 15 feet unless approved by a specific use permit for additional height so it it specifically gives the sup as the pathway for getting additional height on a on an accessory structure so what is the verbiage then for the 1200 square mean for this for the square footage for the size yeah so that's in the zoning all single-family residential zoning districts have a section in in the language about that particular zoning district that gives a basic description of up to 1,200 square feet, including detached garage, workshop, pool house, et cetera, are allowed with a building permit and must observe the setback requirements for the main structures. All accessory buildings greater than 1,200 square feet require a specific use permit. So that's for SF-36. As you go lower in the zoning districts, that maximum size decreases.

Because they have future use of this.

I'm going to be planning on doing within

You know, almost all zoning requirements, almost all, are quite arbitrary. You notice they're all 5 feet, 10 feet, 15 feet. There's no math that says, well, 14 and a half feet is okay, 15 feet isn't. Because you've got to pick something, or you don't have anything. But they're also written by zoning district. You have an SF 30, a lot zoned SF 36, or SF anything. That's five acres. Well, a five-acre lot can handle, visually and neighborly, a much bigger accessory structure than a quarter-acre lot. And that's why SUPs are in the code in a lot of places, because of the variation in real life. What's this one tonight? Two and a half acres?

I just think it starts getting into are we allowing a second house on a property too without re-zoning too much.

That goes to, and we talked about this at the last meeting, where an ADU in our UDC has a very specific intent. You're not allowed to let someone live in there full-time. They need to be related to you. You can't use it as an Airbnb. You can't just have Joe Blow from down the street come stay with you for six months. So the legal minds have already thought about that, and our law prohibits that from happening.

So if this one has a future use of a potential kind of ADU, being a kitchenette and bathroom and things, does that change? that they should be making tonight? Because once you grant it, they don't have to come back if they change it to something else, right? They do, yeah.

And I think there's enough sensitivity to ADUs in Keller that this team is pretty good at talking to people that are building accessory structures about, okay, you're getting an, especially if you're on a two-acre lot and you have the option to, or over one and a half acre lot, you have the option to do an ADU we're having a conversation with them, like, how are you using this? Like, is somebody living there? Because if that's the case, we need to go, this is a different process, or we need to make sure we are transparent about that. And her conversations with the applicant, they were clear with Alexis that, you know, their future plans are unknown, but in terms of how they're planning on using the structure right now, it's exactly what they said, the personal storage and residential use. If they come in with building permit, because again, whenever you approve an SUP, you're not approving the construction of this building. All you're approving, or council ultimately, is approving that they may have this size accessory structure. But then they have to come back to us with a full set of building plans. If those building plans come in and it's a full kitchen with a stove and all of the different kitchen amenities, we're gonna say, hey, you don't have approval for an AEU. That's not what council approved for this structure.

An applicant will be here this evening if you want to ask those questions about the use. But I have had those conversations with them and it's not intended as an ADU at this time.

That's good. That's the right 10 years down the road. If they want to do that, they can come back and get an SAP for that. If it's approved, then they can put doors on their closet and a stove.

This is true. Okay. The other items are changes to the zoning that we have. Let me see where I'm at.

If you want, Chairman, I'm happy to just run through a summary with highlights of each of the next three items.

Yeah, that'll be fine if you do a summary. Then I would ask the commissioners for the most part. Rather than have this discussion here, if you have questions and comments, we just will have that conversation out there. Even though it's a public hearing, I'm anticipating there won't be a lot of time in that part of the issue. And we'll have plenty of time to discuss it out there. So go ahead.

And I'll also note the way that we set this item up is it's actually one big presentation on UDC amendments. But you'll vote separately on each item. The first item is related to definitions in the Unified Development Code. Medical spa, it's a definition that needed to be changed. Actually, that came out of the commission. Dr. Scott, in particular, pointed out the fact that we had the phrase minimally invasive, even though people in medical spas were getting procedures that certainly involved injections and other things. With the help of Dr. Scott, we're changing that to, I'm sorry, it said non-invasive. We're changing it to minimally invasive. And then also added language that they had to follow the regulations of the Texas Medical Board. In the same section of the UDC under definitions, we've got some red line regulations. Language for the home occupations definition. This is something we've been talking to council about since about April driven by Code cases we've received Complaints that we've received over the last several years in different single-family residential neighborhoods ultimately the direction we got from council last month was that Wanted to keep this in the definition section, but provide a bulleted list to bolster what staff was kind of evaluating these complaints against a lot of the complaints that we've received are related to employees that do not live at a single-family residence traveling into a particular neighborhood to report to work so that's that's been a concern for a variety of different types of businesses we started out this process As we do a lot of code amendments with telling counsel, there's always the option to do nothing. Part of what we wanted to do in bringing this to counsel earlier this year was either affirm that they were happy with what was in the UDC and we'll go forward. That helps us, even if we do nothing, it helps staff to be able to tell somebody that's complaining or concerned doesn't like the language. We recently brought this to our elected officials, and they feel like it's adequate. At least we know. We're not just like, well, it's been there for 10 years. We don't know if it's still reflective of the community or not. But they did feel like they wanted to make a few adjustments. So I've got a little bit more information in the presentation, including some research we did looking at the guidelines in other cities. What I have tonight is just a handful, but we actually looked at like a dozen other communities and what they were doing in terms of home occupations. The next item is all related to town center. Two of the things are related to definitions. Some of you that have been on the commission for a while may remember back in 2024, we did a code update where we created the medical spa definition. We also, that was the change that put all spas, barbershops, nail salons, hair salons, everything under the spa definition by SUP in the zoning districts where they are allowed. And then we also made some adjustments to the town center use chart at that point. We did not deal with any animal-related services at that time in Town Center, but there was some interest in applying the same SUP requirement for things like medical and grooming services that we require for humans. So it's an SUP for a spa or a nail salon, but right now we have grooming for animals by right, or any type of medical office. in town center for human requires an SUP, but you can do it by clinic by right. Um, we have very little developable property left in town center. It's certainly an area of Keller that council wants to be able to have a lot of oversight and what goes here. So it seemed like an appropriate adjustment probably that we should have caught back in 2024. And then the other thing under the town center amendment is, um, for whatever reason, we had two different sections, two different subsections dealing with screen walls. One of them was very important. It's an eight-foot screening wall requirement, but it was tucked under a parking lot layout and landscaping, and I missed it when we were doing the plan review for Macalester. Luckily, we got it before they started or completed construction, so that is part of the plan now. but there's also a separate subsection in town center that's titled fences and walls, and that requirement was not in there. So this is not changing any content there. It's just moving everything related to fences and screening under fences and walls instead of parking lot layout and landscaping. And the last one is the most straightforward, also brought to us by a commissioner. Commissioner Brinsinger pointed out that we still had the P&Z listed as the CIAC, the Capital Improvements Advisory Committee. That was changed in 2025. The state legislature said can't do it anymore. So we made the appropriate change in the code of ordinances that defines the CIAC and everything. We just missed, you know, we didn't do it in the UDC. So that just cleans that up.

Okay, great. Okay, so we'll leave the conversation from the dais out there. meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting for July 14th, 2026 for the City of Keller. It is 7.02 p.m. If you'll join me, please, let's stand for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. All right, thank you all. I'd like our commissioners to introduce themselves. We'll start down here at my far right, please.

Andrew Young. Deborah Johnson.

Aaron Farner.

Eric Leist. John Scott.

Ross Brensinger.

And I'm John Baker, your chairman for this evening. Now is the time for the persons to be heard. Now this evening we have four public hearings, and if you're here to speak on any of those issues, one is an accessory dwelling unit, which that's probably why you're here. If you want to wait until we open up that public hearing for that event, that would be appropriate. But at the same time, if you wish to speak now, you can do it. And anybody here that wants to talk for any other, speak to the Commission on any other subject, you're welcome to come forward. Let me read a disclaimer. This is a time for the public to address the Commission on any subject. However, the Texas Open Meetings Act prohibits the Commission from discussing issues which the public has not been given three days' notice. Issues raised may be referred to the city staff for research and possible future action. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes to speak. Is there anybody that wishes to speak to the commission? All right, thank you. Seeing no interest, let's move on to the consent agenda. First item is to consider the minutes for the May 26, 2026 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Are there any additions or corrections to those minutes?

When we were talking in pre-session, I think Commissioner Johnson wanted to remove one of the items from consent that she was absent on so she could abstain.

All right. But we can take these one at a time at this point. So that's what I'm going to do. That's why I'm asking, is there a motion to consider the minutes for the May 26th only planning and zoning commission meeting? Okay. Ms. Farmer?

I make a motion to accept the minutes of May 26th.

And we have a second. Mr. Bresinger? Concur. Okay, so we have a motion and a second for the May 26th Planning and Zoning Commission. All those in favor of accepting those minutes, let's go ahead and vote. And that passes 7-0. Now I'd like to see a motion to consider the minutes for the June 9th, 20 and 26 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. And before we get to that, any additions or corrections? If not, Ms. Farner?

I make a motion that we accept the minutes of June 9th.

All right, thank you. And Commissioner Brunsinger? Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Let's go ahead and vote. Okay, that passed 6-0 with one abstention. Now moving on to new business. This is a public hearing. Consider a request for a specific use permit for an approximately 2,259 square foot detached accessory building located on 2.46 acres on the west side of Keller Smithfield Road. south, approximately 3,065 feet northwest of the intersection of Shady Grove and Keller Smithfield. This is SUP-2605-0016. And Ms. Zimmerman?

Thank you, Chairman. I have the aerial and zoning maps. The subject property is zoned SF-36. The applicant this evening requests an SUP for a 2,259-square-foot detached accessory building with an average height of 18 feet. The proposed structure is to be used for residential storage, workshop, garage, and recreational space. There are two SUP triggers for this structure, the first for an SUP to exceed 1,200 square feet for an accessory structure in SF36, and the second for the height of the structure to exceed 15 feet. Proposed site plan shows that the structure will be located behind the front facade of the existing home and will conform to the setback requirements of the SF 36 zoning district. The accessory structure was designed to match the materials of the main home on the property. The average height, again, of that structure is approximately 18 feet, measured from the average of the base plate and the peak of the roof. Here are some renderings provided by the app tent. And then here are those elevations with the measurements. As we discussed in the pre-meeting, the peak height is the peak of the roof and not the chimney shown. The proposed structure is to be used for residential storage, garage, and recreational space. No commercial business activity or industrial operations are proposed. Here is the floor plan that was provided by the applicant showing the shop and garage area in the square footage. For existing structures on the lot, the main home is approximately 4,859 square feet. It's actually currently under construction or going through the inspection process. There are no other accessory structures on the lot, and the proposed structure is less than 50% of the square footage of the main structure, meaning that an additional SCP is not required for that. On July 2nd, we mailed out 25 letters of notification for this public hearing to all property owners within 300 feet of the subject site. Staff has received no formal public feedback in response to this request. Section 8.02 F2A of the UDC states that when considering an SEP, the Planning and Zoning Commission shall consider the following. Whether the use is harmonious and compatible with surrounding existing uses. The activities requested by the applicant are normally associated with the permitted uses in the base district. The nature of the use is reasonable and appropriate in the immediate area. Any negative impact on the surrounding area has been mitigated and that any additional conditions specified ensure that the intent of the district purposes are being upheld. Again, the request for you this evening is an SUP for a proposed accessory structure to exceed 1,200 square feet in the SF36 zoning district and for the height of that structure to exceed an average of 15 feet tall with the proposed average height of approximately 18 feet. The commission has the following options when considering this request. Recommend approval as submitted or with modifications, table, or recommend denial. If a recommendation is provided tonight, this application will be forwarded to the August 4th City Council agenda. Staff and the applicant are here if you have any questions.

All right. Thank you. Is the applicant or his representative here and wish to speak? Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. At this time, Commissioner Leist. I see no further. Is there anybody else that wishes to speak? I'm sorry.

Good evening, members of the Commission. My name is Bob Stevenson. My wife and I own the property just west of this site, 904 Keller Smithfield Road South. I personally have no issues with the building itself. It actually is replacing a barn that was there for decades, a pretty dilapidated one. The only issues I have with this is the setback from the fence line for Danbury and Nuff. Is this property on septic or is it on city sewage or water? The reason I ask that is the square footage of the house being proposed plus the square footage of the house being built now. Would the septic system, if it is one, be sufficient for it? Where the septic field, if there is one, is going to be located because there is a slope that comes down from that property towards mine? And there is some runoff issues there when we do have a large amount of rain. We had issues with that with the previous owners of the property with their horses and washing their horses' waste onto our property occasionally. So that would be something I'd like to look at as well. If they're not on septic, then if they're on sewage, city sewage, then we shouldn't have an issue with that. But if there is any major drainage issues, The other thing that we might want to address later, and this may not be the time, is if they do a sports little area there, is it going to be lighted, and what kind of lighting they would be using in the future for nighttime. That would be the only things I'd like to address. I appreciate it. Okay.

Just as a fact to enter into this, this is a septic system and not on city sewer, so we'll talk about that here in a few minutes.

Thank you.

All right, thank you. Anybody else wish to speak on this item? And if you would, tell us your name and your address, please.

It's Frank Garrow. 1425 Danbury Parks Drive. Okay.

And I'm Lindsay Galera.

This is my wife, Lindsay. We're trying to find out exactly where this structure is going. I understand it's going on the property. Is it going on the setback of the property? We have no information. We only know that there's a building that they want to put up there. We don't know what the intent of the building is, and we're trying to find out information.

Well, the agenda item was published three days ago on Thursday evening. If you go to the city website, you go to planning and zoning and the agenda, you can pull up the agenda. And when you click on that agenda, it'll give you what we've had proposed here this evening. Basically what Ms. Zimmerman went over in her briefing, that information was available for the three days. But anyway, I'm sorry you weren't aware of it, but it was out there.

Okay.

Well,

The only concern is this is an 18-foot, obviously, structure. Windows, we don't know which way windows would be pointing.

Are they facing Keller Smithfield?

Pardon me, no? Well, I'm just worried. We have a pool in the back, and I don't want windows that look into our backyard or oversee our backyard.

Okay. So for privacy. Right. That's really my concerns. Okay, when we get, maybe staff can help me as to where his home is. Do you have anything that would show maybe on that 200 foot circle that you had?

Okay.

1425.

Oh, sorry, right here.

Yes. Oh, I see. Okay, so you're on the south side. All right, got that. And we will address that as we go through the evening. I don't have an answer for you right now, but we'll address that. So that's our concerns. Okay, that's your concern.

Anything else, sir? Yeah, I mean, I know the owners just purchased the property and they're building on it, But they really need to maintain the property because there's literally weeds 9, 12 feet tall. We have an 8 foot fence and they're already... Way above the 8 foot fence. Okay. So that whole line is covered in weeds. Currently or in the past? In the past and now currently.

Nothing was ever done with it. So just, you know, future upkeep if this is close to... where our property would be.

Okay, could you speak into the microphone? The folks at home can't hear you.

Sorry. No, just again, just because of the lack of upkeep of the yard and whatnot. So if this looks like it would be pretty close to where our backyard would be. So just, you know, if it's considered, you know, upkeep in general of it as time goes on, considering we would, you know, it'd be right there in the backyard.

All right. Thank you. Is there current, do you have a fence along that back property line? Eight foot fence. And eight foot?

Eight foot.

Correct. And it's not tall enough to prevent folks on this? No, I have pictures I can submit to the board. Okay. Thank you. All right. Is that it?

That's it.

All right. Thank you very much.

We're still in the public hearing, so we need to close the public hearing first.

We're still in the public hearing. As soon as we get this figured out, we'll entertain questions. Is there anybody else that wishes to speak to the commission? Okay. Commissioner Lice? Move to close the public hearing. And Commissioner Farner?

I second.

All right. A motion and a second to close the public hearing. Let's go ahead and vote. Okay, the public hearing is now closed 7-0. And at this time, we can entertain some questions. And Commissioner Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like for the couple to come back up. Yes. Would you mind showing us? Point of order.

Is it appropriate to bring the public that's not a party to the item up for discussion or just the applicant outside of the public hearing?

Typically, once the public hearing is closed, the dialogue between the commission and non-applicant attendees is over, but I will defer to the meeting chair on how you want to proceed.

Since this was brought up, Let's go ahead and if you'll come forward and we'll listen to you. Thank you, Mr.

Chair, because before we closed it for public hearing from my fellow commissioner, I did want to ask questions. So point of order does not count. Thank you. Would you mind showing me your home, where it is and where it's located? Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, if you don't mind, show me where your pool is in relationship to this new addition.

Right above the slide.

Yeah, it's probably right there, my pool.

Probably back a little more.

So how far back is your pool in relationship to that wall? To the back fence wall? Yes, sir. I would say it's 15 feet. 15 feet. and right now you have currently an eight-foot wall, and you're saying that the windows of the new addition is going to be 15, 12 feet high, and they're looking into your backyard. Is that correct?

If there's windows facing that side of the property, yes.

Okay. I'm going to leave this as a question. What would be an idea that you would consider?

No windows on that side of the building.

Sir?

No windows facing that side of the building on the second floor.

Right. That was my question. Thank you both.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Commissioner Lice?

Yeah, just quickly, could we get the building rendering up that shows the elevation? certainly thank you um while we're doing that just a question on the gentleman's question about the septic system i assume that's going to be based on the drawings and renderings of where the buildings are on the property it seems like there's a good acre of land between where that septic system will likely be and the property line is that that is it typical that what i assume will be an aerobic septic system is going to be close to the the buildings themselves I know you're not an expert, so I'm just like ballparking it here.

On many things, septic systems are definitely not one of them. So I don't have a good way to answer that unless, other than to confirm it will be unseptic.

Yes, sir, maybe you have a question. I can tell you exactly where it's at. Could you come up to the microphone, please? Thank you.

So question of windows, there's no windows on that side.

Name, please.

Oh, it's Chase Hall. I'm the builder. And there's no windows on the side facing that side at all. It's a one-story. It's not a two-story. So also no windows. The septic is between that building and the house. The three sprinkler heads will be between there. So they will be not past the building at all in between the current home being built. If you look at the site plan, you'll be able to see it.

Just before we move this, just for everyone's understanding, the elevation on the bottom right-hand corner of this slide is what is facing this gentleman's fence? Correct. So no windows? Okay, very good. So hopefully that takes care of your concern that there are no windows on that fence-facing side of the building.

Keep going, keep going. There it is. So here you go. So our septic tank is located here. And our distribution field is here. So I believe the other gentleman's property is all the way back there somewhere.

Got it. I did see on the overhead view that there's at least a small pond. Do you know if the...

The little pond at the front near Killers.

Oh, it's on the front side. Other side. Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, so I think that septic systems don't put off A massive amount of water, right? Sprinklers are going to run twice a day, maybe.

I mean, there's only two people living there, so unless they have a lot of people come over, it isn't going to do much, average daily. I mean, it's going to have a big system because they do plan on putting a bathroom in this structure for, like, family events and hanging out, but it's just a single bathroom, and the rest will be in the house. It's just the two people living there permanently that might have a kid move in one day, but they're older. But it's just them two currently.

Okay, cool. And just for sake of clarification, if they moved in, they would be moving into the main residence? The main residence, correct.

This is not a living residence. This is a shop and like a barn thing. We're kind of like a hangout barn, I guess you could say. Their plan is to put a small sport court right here. in the future. Got it. Do they intend to light that? I think that was one of them. Not at this time. I don't know if they are, but we're not doing that for a while. We built the pad out. It's ready, but right now it's the house and the structure currently is all they're worried about. Got it.

Question for staff. I've never... This isn't popped up except on the Mahomes property that was in the far north side of the town. But if a resident wants to add lighting to a sport court or anything outside, is that something that they need to come to the city for? Or is it something that they just can do of their own?

So for a sport court, the The things that may trigger a permit would be fencing or an electrical permit for lighting. And then we do have guidelines for residential lighting and glare standards that they would need to follow. Our co-compliance officers have light meters that they regularly use for any issues where they'll go out either late at night or early in the morning. But if we know what they're doing with the electrical permit, we would give them that information early on so they could hopefully design or install shields. so that it wouldn't be a problem.

Got it. And there's no electrical going there right now? Just the pad?

No. Awesome.

I think this is a great project. Actually, we were driving by over the weekend, and I commented to my wife that the house was looking great. So I think it's a great project. I'm inclined to support the accessory structure. I think, just again, for the neighbor next to y'all, it might just be good, since we've got a lot more rain this year than normal, it might just be good to have a brush hog run through and just cut it down, because I'm sure he's got a beautiful yard, too, and nobody wants seeds from the weeds coming over the fence and messing things up.

To that, the owner is going to have the entire property landscaped and that whole entire fence row has weed trees on it too. It's going to be completely cleared and landscaped once we get kind of closer to grading the yards and all that. I'll let him know to see if they can get somebody to kind of chop them down for now, but there's some hackberries and stuff growing along that fence. They were there when he bought it. He cleared up a bunch when he bought it, but he was kind of waiting until he's living there before he We have to do a lot of dirt work and move stuff around. So once we get all that, we're going to landscape the full yard. I think you're putting a fountain in that pond. So it'll be pretty nice property when it's all said and done. Perfect.

Thank you. It was a beautiful looking project. Excited to support it. This concludes my questions.

All right. Thank you. Staff, Ms. Emmerich, could you pull up the The site plan of the building itself where it shows the floor plan. Sure.

This one or the elevations?

That's good right there. Okay. In your, sir, if you would come back forward. I didn't get your name. Hall. Hall. Mr. Hall, thank you. In your remarks, you made something about, I said something about a bathroom. Were you frank to a bathroom in this structure?

Eventually, they would want to put one in there. So we're pre-plumbing it. See where it says drain on there? We're going to just put it in the slab. So if they ever put a little bathroom thing in there, we're going to be able to accommodate that without having to do a lot of remodel work to it. All right, that makes sense. It would just be in that corner. And it's going to have, we don't even know if we're going to do the little fireplace. They would kind of make that kind of a little hangout area if they do that sport court where you can have some roll-up doors and you can go back and forth and not have to go all the way back to the house because it's a little bit of a walk for that. That's a future possible plan, but I don't know if it will happen.

Okay, so you've plumbed it for the bathroom.

We would put the lines in and just have them stubbed out so we could attach it to the septic one day if we ever needed to.

Okay. And throughout this discussion, I don't know how much you've heard of the pre-meeting, but if in fact they decide to make this a dwelling, an accessory dwelling to the property, it's going to require a whole new process to go through to get that approved.

Correct.

Because in this discussion, in your application, you said something about a future bathroom and kitchenette

like a outdoor kitchen, kind of an indoor kind of thing. They want to have like a sink where you can host a gathering, have your family over, and they play a lot of pickleball and tennis and stuff, so that way they kind of have a place back there and not be in the main house is the goal for it, and to have a restroom if they do it. It's not for sure, and it wouldn't be a dwelling. There'd be no bedroom or anywhere to sleep. I guess you could sleep on the floor in anything, honestly, but Right now it won't even have even insulation. It's just going to be a shop for now.

Okay. At this point I intend to support it too, but with the actual idea that if you decide to go much further with it, with a kitchenette and kitchen and make this into an accessory dwelling unit, because the way you've got this laid out here on this schematic, I see a wall that goes 50% separates the garage from what you call the shop, but your shop has a fireplace in it, which is unusual.

Correct.

And so it looks like this planning for the future looks like it may be going in a direction that would require a little more.

And if it comes to that, they'll have to go through the process again. But as of right now, this is what he wants to build, so we're just trying to make it happen for him.

All right. Thank you. And Commissioner Bresinger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're kind of mixing fruits here a little bit, and residents had some concerns, and spending some time to get them answers and do the education, that's a great thing. That's part of our job, even if it's not... exactly what we normally do. So I'm good with that, but we have to remember the house and the septic system have been approved. They're built on them. And I understand the gentleman's concern. but it has nothing to do with what we're looking at tonight, because he's not putting a bathroom in tonight. It's not in the plan. If he does put one in, he's going to have to review when it goes through the building permit to hook up, is the septic system big enough to hold that, and all kinds of other things. Also, he said a couple things that are irrelevant in that He's got two people living in the house, so they're not going to generate that much water, and I'm sure that's true. It's irrelevant. The septic system is based on the number of bathrooms, and the next owner could have 55 kids and use them all, so it's interesting but irrelevant. Relative to the overgrown yard, I understand that was the previous owner, but at any time that anyone in the city sees something like that, you can call community development, and they have... Inspectors who will go out and if it's not inconsistent if the condition is inconsistent with the code They'll deal with it so that that option is always available So that's what I wanted to say I do approve I think is a good good thing and I intend to support it. Thank you All right.

Thank you very much and Commissioner Johnson I

Next question, because in the documentation it talks about, we've talked about it being 18 feet high, but I know that it talks about actually the overall height is 26, which I'm assuming is where the fireplace is. And when you're looking at the use of this, I am, I mean, it's just very curious that we've got a fireplace and then we're going up 26 feet when it's a garage. I mean, is it even going to be built with a flue or we're just sticking bricks up?

So they may not even do the fireplace, but it was on the drawing when they did it. If we do it, it'll have a flue and be bricked for an outdoor, indoor fireplace set up. The height is to kind of match our house we're building. We don't want a little small roof. It's only a one-story structure. There's no second floor. It's going to be completely open when you walk in with 18-foot ceilings. So that's the look they're kind of going for. He wants it tall because he has a couple cars and a lift in that one side. He wants to be able to have two cars stacked and make it. Plenty of room to move around, I guess.

And I understand, and a lot of our questions are basically about future use, but we have seen on council where people will, I mean not council, apologize, commission, where we end up seeing something because they've changed it in the middle of it. And while I understand that's not the structure, and while I understand that there is, you would have to come back for a different building if you do start putting in kitchens and things. I think the public likes to hear exactly what the intent is. So I think that's where a lot of these questions are coming from. Because you even mention in your document the fact that they're talking about putting in a bedroom, potentially. I had it pulled up and I went to a future bedroom in a small kitchenette. in an area to support a game room and a pool house style. And so we've mentioned pool a couple of times, yet on the diagram I didn't see where the pool would be going in. And if you're talking about getting to the septic question, the septic being in the immediate backyard, that precludes the pool from going there. So where would you even see on this as a builder where it might even be able to potentially go?

Like a future pool. I mean, as far as I know, they don't plan on a future pool, but if you did, they would probably put it somewhere here on the house. I don't know, you can't see that. How do you make the little, there it is. No, laser pointer. Here we go. So it would probably, if you did a pool, you could put it somewhere here.

Okay.

Because this is going to have the one, two, it's like a triangle. the septic heads the tank is going to be over here now on this main structure since it's just the two of them they're not finishing the second floor it's a giant attic they didn't want that much room they did it because if they ever sell it somebody might want a bigger house on this big piece of property and they're like we don't need a giant house so it's over It's not the full square footage. Upstairs, there's two bedrooms and a game room and two bathrooms at our night, and they're just framed up and wide open, foam-encapsulated attic storage is what it is.

Okay, and thank you for pointing out, because that was my concern. Where could there even be a place for a pool when you've got... I'm on a septic, so I do understand the bed, the drain.

So he's planning, he plans on living here. forever he says but he's also thinking if I ever move or somebody needs to buy it it is almost it's two and a half acres so it's if somebody wants a bigger house it's already ready to be made into that into it rather than adding on and doing all that stuff it can just be finished out

And then my only is a little bit of septic and I think they touched on a little bit but are you aware if they do add the bathroom in here is the septic that you are currently putting in large enough to handle it up now in addition upstairs plus?

Correct. The septic that is being installed is large enough for the house and the potential one extra bathroom down there with a lift station. because it's kind of downhill, so we'll send it up to the...

So it would even cover the bathrooms on the second floor?

It's way oversized for what they need for now, but it's made for future.

Okay, because that would give some comfort, too.

Correct.

Is there, in the structure and foundation that's being put where this building is, have enough to carry weight to potentially add a second story?

We peer all of our foundations, so we'll have peers, as the House does. I mean, could you? You probably could if you wanted to.

It's going to be a still structure. I'm going to interrupt here. I agree with Commissioner Bresinger. The question on the table is this accessory unit. All of these questions that go to... who's going to live on the second floor of the main house, how big the field line is, are really not relevant to that question. And when they decide that if they want to get, turn this into an accessory dwelling unit, they will get permits and meet the code of the city.

You may have misunderstood in my direction. He brought up some of it. I was just questioning some of it, but I am concerned with what the structure that's going up and the potential concrete that's there, whether it would even be able to be expanded. I mean, are we trying to say we're going to give you a specific use permit for something that potentially has a different use than what we are actually presented with? And that's what I'm getting at. So there was a method to where my questioning was going. It's like if you want this specific use, are we building it actually for a different use? And that was where the questioning was going. But what I'm hearing from you, that's not what we are doing.

We did not plan that as far as I know.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. With that, Commissioner Lice?

yeah um i i i i just want to echo um both chairman baker and commissioner brenzinger i think it's really important um for um out of respect for the agenda items that we received that we really focus on what they're about um and we also don't it's good that we look at the immediate impacts they could have especially on neighbors but we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow let alone five years from now and five owners from now i live in a house that was built in the 70s um I mean, we're not using parts of that property that was originally envisioned, but we came back and previous owners came back and do it, but we can't interrogate that now. And certainly I'm just going to assume the slab you're building is good enough for what you're going to do. It was a very thorough document. And so I think it's just, it's a good reminder. that both of y'all brought up that we really need to, our job is to evaluate the proposal on the table, brought in good faith. Yeah, we get some folks that come back and they haven't done the process right, but these guys are doing the process right and we shouldn't hold their application accountable for mistakes other people have done. So with that, I move to approve item E1 as presented.

All right, thank you. Commissioner Bransker? Second. We have a motion and a second to approve Item E1, is there any further discussion? Okay, let's go ahead and vote. Okay, that is approved with a vote of seven to zero. Sir, you'll go before the city council on August 4th. This is an advisory recommending body. The council or elected representatives will make the final decision, but we wish you good luck on your project and thank you much. Thank you, thank you Okay, let's move on to a public hearing for item e to Consider a request to approve amendments to the city of Keller unified development code adopted by ordinance number 1746 July 7th 2015 by amending Article III definitions relating to the definitions of home occupations and medical spas, providing penalties, authorizing publication, establishing an effective date. And Ms. Hensley.

Thank you, Chairman. And as I mentioned, we've got a combined presentation for items E2, E3, and E4, and we can do a combined public hearing, and then we'll do the votes on each of the separate items. So starting off with item E2, this one has to do with the definition section of the code. Starting off with the medical spa definition that was put in place in 2024. Several of you on the commission probably remember that UDC amendment. We were lucky enough as we were going through, I think, probably the very first medical spa that applied in Keller to have Dr. Scott point out to us that we had this phrase non-invasive in that definition that really didn't make any sense based on the types of procedures. And so the change for that medical spa definition is to change non-invasive to minimally invasive and then also add that language, also recommended by Dr. Scott, that medical spas would follow regulations of the Texas Medical Board. For the home occupations, this is something that staff has been discussing with city council for the last couple of months based on Some code complaints we've received in our office, as I mentioned in the work session, there's always the option to do nothing. We do have a home occupations definition in the code right now, but that is it. There's no other regulations, no other guidelines for either staff or residents to follow when we're trying to determine what is and is not allowed in residential areas in terms of businesses out of someone's home. I'll get into that a little bit more in a moment, but ultimately the direction staff got from council was to keep it within the definition section, but kind of reorganize it, make it a bulleted list with a few additions to make it a little bit more user-friendly both for residents and for staff. So Looking at the red line for medical spas, again, like I mentioned, we're taking out that non-invasive language and replacing with minimally invasive and that language regarding the Texas Medical Board. Looking at the home occupation, what was driving that was, again, resident concerns. The most common things that we hear are about increased traffic on the street. A lot of times there's concern over vehicles and trailers, vans that are wrapped in a company logo. or vehicles in particular that are belonging to employees that don't live at the residence. This is not someone has a business and their daily driver is parked on their driveway because they drive at home. It's oftentimes employees that are reporting to work at the home, but they do not live there. So their vehicles are parked on the street or, you know, along the curb near other homes. Also get complaints about storage of work materials and equipment on single-family lots. That can be trailers, construction material, pool chemicals. We've seen plumbing equipment. We've seen landscaping equipment. A lot of different items that people have stored in different ways on their property. And then, like I mentioned, the employees reporting to work at homes that they are not the residents of.

This is our current definition, what's in the UDC right now.

Any occupation or activity carried on principally by the inhabitants of a dwelling which is clearly secondary to the use of the dwelling for dwelling purposes provided that the existence of the occupation or activity does not change neighborhood character or substantially increase traffic to and from the dwelling. No trading and merchandise or selling of goods and services is carried out on a regular basis. The merchandise is displayed and no mechanical equipment is used except types that are customary. for purely domestic or household purposes and which do not create obnoxious conditions such as noise, odor, smoke, or electrical interference. Uses that are not considered home occupations include beauty and barber shops, tea rooms, restaurants, rest homes or clinics, bed and breakfasts, cabinet repair shops, metalworking shops, auto repair, and commercial stables. One of the things about this definition right now is if it is one of those things not allowed, that is a simple case If Lucy's Hair Salon opens up in her living room, she puts out a sign that says Lucy's Hair Salon, that's a slam dunk case. Most of the cases that we get are not that straightforward. So part of the research that we did in preparation for discussing this with council was we reached out probably to about 12 to 15 cities. I've got some more of this information, but for tonight we focused on these kind of neighboring communities. wanting to see what other folks were doing and enforcing in their communities. What we found was consistently across these other cities is they have something in their ordinance that talks about it needs to be people that are living on the property that are engaged in the home occupation. It doesn't need to be folks from other areas or other communities coming into the neighborhood to carry out whatever the business is. All of them also, that middle column talk about neighborhood character and not increasing that on-street parking. That last column, we didn't find anything we thought that was particularly applicable to Keller, so we didn't really add any language drawn from those. In terms of how people are using the percentages of their homes, it's a little bit, number one, very difficult to enforce, a little bit too far for, I think, where we're comfortable in Keller and going with co-compliance. And ultimately, if you're operating a home occupation, that has no impact whatsoever on your neighbors. You know, you're a CPA, or whatever you're doing online, using your home for that, and you have 28% of the floor area dedicated to that business, but everything else on the exterior, how it operates in your neighborhood, is purely a single-family residential. I don't know that co-compliance has a role in that. And I think those last few columns from Grapevine and NRH were kind of accomplishing through other things in the definition or ordinances we already have in terms of outside storage and just the aesthetics of the neighborhood. So getting into the red line on this one, a lot of these were, and there's not a ton of changes, but this is kind of a culmination of input from the city attorney, the city council, and staff. So again, council's direction was to create more of a bulleted list so that we could tell people, these are the factors against which we evaluate home occupations. making it clear that the home occupation must be carried out by inhabitants of the dwelling on the premises. It needs to be secondary to use of the dwelling for dwelling purposes, and that the existence of the occupation or activity doesn't change the neighborhood character as measured by factors that include but are not limited to the following, and those are occupation or activity, again, is carried out by inhabitants of the dwelling, no substantial increase in on-street parking or traffic to and from the dwelling occurs. No outdoor assembly of employees, clients, or equipment is allowed. This really gets at to the employees arriving for work, not going into the home, which is something we've seen. They're standing at the curb every morning at 7.30 a.m., waiting for maybe the crew leader or someone else to come. He picks them all up, and they get in the truck. It's not always noticeable if we get a code complaint on it. It's noticeable to the neighbors that are living next door and seeing that day in and day out. No trading and merchandise or selling of goods or services, no merchandise displayed, no mechanical equipment. That's language that we already had in there. And then one of the suggestions from the city attorney was to add in that HVAC plumbing and other mechanical supply and contracting businesses as uses that are not considered home occupations. We did have one of the commissioners point out that we probably achieve that with the rest of the language. And so If the commission felt like that's something that needs to come out or be recommended as a deletion going into council, we're happy to go forward like that. And then reiterating that all parking used for the home occupation must be met off street, meaning whatever you're doing for your home occupation, you need to have sufficient driveway parking to accommodate that so it's not spilling over onto the road. So again, for this particular item, we've got the modified medical spa definition, pretty straightforward, and the somewhat less straightforward home occupation definition that has a handful of different changes, including the guideline that states the occupation or activity shall be carried out by inhabitants of the dwelling on premises. So our second UDC amendment definition, This evening is related to Article 8, Section 8.17, Town Center. We're going to talk about allowable uses and screening wall requirements. Again, in that 2024 UDC update that I mentioned earlier, we made several changes to the Town Center use chart. We did not touch the you know, either permitted or SUP for veterinary and clinic or kennels grooming only. With the limited amount of developable property left in town center, we felt it was appropriate to apply the same SUP requirements for medical and grooming services that we have for humans also to animals. Ultimately, it just gives the commission and then council the ability to evaluate those uses in a zoning district that has been a high priority and continues to be a high priority for the community. I think we saw that with the Baylor Scott and White SUP that came through just a couple of months ago. Ultimately was approved, but there was definitely some concern about is that the right use for town center? Is that the type of use that we want to see in this area? And that gives that control to council. And then reorganization of town center design standards During the review process of a recent project, we realized that we had screening wall requirements tucked in under landscape parking lot layout and landscaping. So what we're proposing this evening is just to move all of the screening wall and fencing requirements under the fences and walls subsection of town center. It doesn't change any content or requirements in terms of those screening walls or fences. So just a little summary. Kennels grooming only and veterinarian clinic moving from permitted by right to SUP. And then those screening wall requirements all getting moved over to fences and walls.

Another summary.

And then finally, our last UDC amendment is related to Article 1, Section 1.05, departments and boards involved in land development. And this is related to the Planning and Zoning Commission. Previously served as the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee and worked with the public works team on the impact fee schedule. The Texas legislature changed that in 2025. We did update our code of ordinances in November of last year to reflect that change in Austin, but we missed this little line in the UDC, so it does take out that description under P&Z in section 1.05 of the UDC, and then as in Capital Improvements Advisory Committee. This is the definition or description also in the Code of Ordinances so that we do have CIAC listed as a board involved in land development. All right. We did publish notice for each of these UDC amendments separately in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. We've received two emails from the public regarding the proposed changes. Those were both related to the home occupations language. One of them was, by and large, an editing of my typos, a lot of which I've already corrected in what you saw this evening. And then the other substantial one came from Commissioner Brunzinger related to the carve-out for the HVAC and other contracting businesses. Like I said, we decided to leave that language in for this evening and let the commission discuss. So options for the commission this evening, recommend approval, recommend approval with modifications, table, or recommend denial. This item will go on to council on August 4th with a recommendation from the commission. Happy to answer any questions. And like I said, this is public hearing for each of them that we can conduct next.

Okay, so... I think the way that you presented that, it would be appropriate that we open the public hearing for all three items, take care of it. It doesn't look like there's a great interest in it. And then we will open it up for discussion on all three items, and then we'll have a motion to approve or deny on all three items. I'm comfortable with that. If there's any commissioner that feels that we need to break something out so that they can identify a problem with it, Now is your time to speak up. OK, with that, let's open the public hearing for item E2, E3, and E4, which generally are changes to the UDC. And with that, oh, I have people that wish to speak. So the motion, this is the public hearing. Anybody wish to come forward? I see no interest, so Commissioner Farner?

A motion that we close public hearing for E2, E3, and E4.

All right, thank you. And Commissioner Leish? Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. To close the public hearing on all three items, E2, E3, and E4, let's go ahead and vote. I carry 7-0. Public hearing is now closed. Now we're open for comment. And Commissioner Brenzinger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with the intent of all these, but I do have a problem with the words on the home occupation, specifically plumbing, HVAC, and mechanical. Say you've got Pat the plumber. Pat has a truck. He has his plumbing equipment in there. He gets up in the morning. goes to work for Butt Crack Plumbing, a big regional plumbing house. Everybody's happy. He decides he wants to break away from Butt Crack and open his own business, Covered Butt Plumbing. So he does that. He gets up in the morning, gets into the same truck, drives away and does plumbing as himself. Nothing has changed relative to the neighborhood, but he has gone from legal to illegal because of the words we chose to put in there. So I... do not support calling out those occupations specifically as not allowed, because there's many cases where there's no reason they shouldn't be allowed, and the other words in the section cover if covered plumbing gets big and he starts having other people come, he can't do that, because you can't have people parking there, you can't have the other things, so I'm I don't support those words. There's a problem with enforcing that in that how would we ever know that he left butt crack and went to cover butt? There's no way we would know. We couldn't enforce it. So I think we're building a lot of problems and not solving the problem with those words. So in that particular one, I do not support it unless we change those words. In general, I have one other concern. And it's not directly in the UDC, but it goes to when does this take effect? Because we're gonna make some businesses illegal. And I think we need to give them notice. So my recommendation is that if this gets approved, it doesn't become enforced for like six months. to give people time to find a location, move their business, and do all that. That's not really part of the UDC, but I think it's important to be considered as we go forward to city council. Thank you.

All right.

Thank you. So your recommendation is on item E2 that we strike that verbiage about Which occupations or?

We strike the verbiage that's added. There's a number of occupations.

Just leave it the way it was.

Yes. Because those are all, the occupation itself, doing it in the house would make noise, would generate traffic, would do something, and we're used to them. I don't, I think this ad would be bad. And the intent is covered by the other words in the change.

So if you were to make an amendment to this to approve, if you were with an amendment to that approval, you would strike the red lettering on this particular page down there where it says HVAC, plumbing, and other mechanical supply and contracting, all parking used for home occupation must be met off street?

I would keep the all parking.

You would keep that?

But I would remove the HVAC, plumbing, and other mechanical supply and contracting businesses.

Okay, that's interesting. Okay, with that, looks like we're going to be taking each of these items individually then so that we can work through, particularly if we're going to be making amendments to them. Now, with that, do you have any further comment, Mr. Presinger? No. No.

Okay. Just asking, Chairman, if it would be appropriate just before we depart, because I'm sure Commissioner Scott's going to have a different item to talk about, and I just have a question about that, if you don't mind. I'll save the rest of my questions until after Commissioner Scott makes his, but would... If, so say this gentleman's truck is parked in his driveway as it's written, would it actually be in violation? Because if it's met off street and he's got his HVAC truck for his now home business, but it's just in his driveway, is that, and this is more of a question for staff, would that be unlawful under this? Or is it only if it's then like parked in the road?

In my opinion, if you live in a house and you have a truck and parking is legal on your road, you can park it on the road. And that's true for all of us. And in my example, everything he does at his house and in the road would not change with him going from a company to his own business. And if his business grew or he needed other plumbers and they had to come by, They couldn't do that because of the other provisions in this section. All right. The staff may disagree with me because they often do, but.

So if it was a situation where the only thing was this gentleman's work truck parked in his own driveway, I would not consider that worthy of a, you know, we're looking at all those different factors. I suspect part of what, so that particular language was suggested by our city attorney. I suspect it was partly driven by a particular case we had where somebody was operating their plumbing business out of their garage. They had it full of PVC. They had multiple employees coming to the home with multiple work vehicles loading the supplies into the trucks out of the garage. So I did not ask him that specifically, but I think that may have been what was driving this, but Again, it's certainly not designed for someone who's either works for a company or owns a company and they drive their company truck and it's parked in their own driveway and that's the extent of it. They're not doing any of those other things. I think what council wanted was this kind of list of things so that if we have a business that is, or a home that's operating and we're like, great, you've got this, this, and this going, these are all things that are specifically stated in the ordinance that are not allowed were able to pursue that case. I would not consider someone with just the truck parked in their driveway as operating a home occupation in violation of the ordinance.

So, Chair, I have a question and I apologize, but if I own my business and my business address is my house and I'm operating out of that and I have covered by HVAC, I now am a home business, correct? Because my business address is my house. I'm sitting in my house in the morning, making my calls, booking my appointments before I get in my truck and drive off. So according to this, I would now be in violation if Mr. Brenzinger saw my truck in my driveway and said she's operating a home office in her house because Covered butt is listed as my home address, the truck is in my driveway, and I'm making my calls in the morning before I, and my pipe is stored in the garage or in my accessory building, so I'm with Mr. Brinsinger is, according to this, I'm operating a home business in my residence, right? The fact that I go and do the plumbing elsewhere when I drive off, but my business is listed as my home. So why would that not be a home occupation? So I guess I'm with you that if this stays in here, I would now be in violation of making those calls and booking those appointments and listing my company at my home. When I go to the bank and register my, my company because that's my home address. And therefore I would be in violation under this. Now would someone report me? I don't know, but the moment that it did, I would be in violation of the code. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So you're telling us that These changes were made by the city attorney?

That particular addition was suggested by our city attorney. Again, I think partly driven by his experience with cases in Keller or other communities. I mentioned the plumbing case we've had recently. I think from a staff perspective, we've got a lot of other content in the definition now that if that was taken out and covered rear-end plumbing was operating and having people arrive at the home and they were assembling outside and if they've got all that other stuff going on, those are the bigger issues. It's certainly not someone operating their home office and making their calls for whatever type of business. Those are not the businesses that we're getting complaints about or that we even know about or need to know about.

But it seems to me, again, we're kind of getting out of our list here, but the thread that Commissioner Bresinger has brought up, it lists home uses of beauty, barbershops, breakfast facilities, cabinet repairs, That implies to me that they don't want these businesses that have metalworking, auto repair on site at the home. And that includes HVAC if you were to overhaul an AC unit in your driveway or you were going to pre-plumb a toilet in your driveway. So it's the business aspect of these particular businesses occupations that we're trying to say you can't do that in your home.

Right. It's the activity. It's not the office or the administration that would be going on, you know, like a restaurant. You could open a restaurant and do part of your administration or your payroll of the restaurant in your home office.

What if there was just like we added like language about like a non-clerical or non-clerical or administrative activities associated with And then it's very clear, like, you're calling your appointments for the day, and then you go in your truck. Like, no one's telling you you can't do that. Because, I mean, you can do it in your driveway, even, because people talk on their driveway. But you can't set up an HVAC system in your driveway, because you should get a shop for that. That's not a residential thing. I think that might take care of, really, the... I might clarify the intent, because then if anyone makes a complaint, it's like, no, they can park their truck in their driveway. That's not what this is about. It's about them actually creating a, it's about them doing work and storing materials in the garage or driveway.

Do you see that, Commissioner Brasinger, that it's the activity of the HVAC business, the activity of plumbing business that they're trying to clarify here, or not? I mean...

Well, as you all are used to, I can be very literal. And when I read those words, it says the business. It doesn't say the operations. It says the business.

Interesting. Well, with that, let me continue with our cue here. And Commissioner Scott, do you wish to speak?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate everybody's comments. First off, can we back up a minute to the medical spas? There needs to be something in there. You can use a TMB, but my concerns are it needs to say physician slash MD slash DO. For the simple reason there are DNPs now, doctors and nurse practitioners, doctors and nurse anesthetists, so it needs to be a medical physician. So if that's part of what you're using and it comes from the TMB, Texas Medical Board, that's fine. I just don't see it. Now you've changed from non-invasive to minimally invasive. So I want to make sure the med spa that comes in here has a physician oversight on anything that's minimally invasive.

So I think we were, what would be most helpful, Dr. Scott, if you could, if you could send us the exact language that you think would be best, and then we can add that into the red line for council.

I appreciate it because it's getting such a blurred now. I have a doctorate of E&P, so what? You know, so it says doctorate. That's why I want to make sure it's a medical physician, either an MD or DO that went to medical school.

Yeah.

And did residency. Okay. Now, that ends that. Moving on to the next thing. There's a fine line in all of this. One thing, I do not have a problem with a vehicle in the driveway that says plumbing, but I do not like the idea of storage in the garage. I think Eric is right on about the deal. I'm making my phone calls. I'm making my thing. If we have to make it 30 pages long to define every single thing, no, I don't want my neighbor... to have all the storage of HVAC pool, pool equipment, pipes, plumbing, all that. That should be in a storage unit. That should be in an office away. Two, three vehicles in the driveway that say plumbing or pool, no. I think it's fair and reasonable to your neighbor that the city ordinance say, no, you get one vehicle that says something plumbing. Then here's the other thing is, In the morning, at 7 a.m. or 6.30, you've got 20 vehicles in your driveway loading up. So I think the citizens of color need to be protected from that. And it shouldn't be my job to tell you, now I've made an enemy of my neighbor, saying, you've got 40 trucks in your driveway loading up every single morning. That's not fair. So I'd rather we, how do you say it, push on the side of too much than too little. And I really believe that I don't think the purpose is, like Eric's saying, I'm going to make all my calls. They're not stopping you from making your calls. It's that if we got 40 vehicles, we got all the storage equipment, we got everything out there, quote, I hid it in the garage. No, absolutely not. So if we need to modify the language, that's great. But I want to protect my neighbors and myself. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Commissioner Leish.

Yeah, just to echo what Commissioner Scott said, I think just, well, two things on this in particular. One, I think having something where it's very clear that it's that we're not referring to the production, we're not referring to clerical and administrative. And I think that makes it really clear. Um, as far as intent, right? Cause like all law, like there's just very clear intent with this document that I don't think we're talking about the guy's truck. I think, again, you read it literally and I think you're right. That wouldn't be allowed. But I think when you read the intent of this document, it's not, we're not telling you you can't park your truck. Um, but, and then I do hear your point about like parking on the road, like you have right to park on the road. Um, so fair. Um, so that's the thing that I just, um, Stan is a better lawyer than me. I'm not one, so I'm a terrible lawyer. But I am a little worried about the not limited to because then who gets to interpret that? Is that staff? Is it city council? Is it municipal court? Because, I mean, but not limited to is, but not limited to. So then someone, I mean. can make a complaint and again it goes to intent so it's like it's implied what we're looking at i don't think that and i don't that's just like a flag for stan that's nothing that we can decide here today and i think even the solution for this i think this discussion is helpful for i don't think we're going to come up with a solution for this i think it's bringing this back to stan and then so that he can bring something different to counsel because he's he's a lawyer he's seen more of this than we have um So and then the second thing is a question about businesses. What I don't see addressed here are businesses where customers come by home to pick things up. And I know like there's a lot of there are a lot of businesses, whether they mean essentially like running a Facebook marketplace shop is turned into like a thing. And people like they'll obviously we're not talking about the garage sale or the person that sells their sofa. but some people turn in Facebook Marketplace into a thing, and then they have people stopping by all day. There's cottage bakery stuff. I see this potentially blocking that, but where folks will have, because that's becoming popular again, where folks will stop by all day and pick things up. Is that prohibited by this? Is it intended to be? We're talking a lot about employees. I don't see a lot about customers coming by, and I think that can be just as much of a problem if this is what we're looking to address. I'm trying to avoid coming back and say, oh, we forgot about the customer side of this.

So, I can't think of a single case where we've had a complaint about customers coming to someone's home. I think the no substantial increase in on-street parking or traffic to and from the dwelling occurs. I think we would have to evaluate what's actually going on. You have a couple of customers that pop in daily or a few times a week to pick something up and their total time in the neighborhood is less than 10 minutes or do you have 50 customers coming? What's the scale? Unfortunately, co-compliance a lot of the time is in the gray. It's like I said earlier, if we have somebody that's operating a hair salon in their living room and they put a sign in the front yard that says Lucy's Hair Salon and they make a Facebook page and a website, that's a really easy home occupation code case. Most of them are not that easy. And so we're looking for several different factors that are impacting the neighbors. And ultimately, and I probably should have explained this during the presentation, there's not a single staff member that has the ability to go and, you know, unless they're doing something illegal and then we're calling our friends across the street at the police department. But we can't go and immediately shut someone down. There's a process. There's a notification process. Any type of home occupation, we're getting our prosecutor and our city attorney involved because if our prosecutor says, you don't have enough, this is just a neighbor-to-neighbor complaint, we don't even want to take this to the municipal court judge, then we're not even going to spend the time on the case. We will work with the residents and explain what's going on, but to your point, Commissioner Leist, in the end, the ability to either find someone or force them to cease something lies with the judge not with staff not even with counsel it would lie with the judge to to look at our ordinance and say we feel like you are in violation of this and you need to stop i mean a lot of the time hopefully as it is with most of our other co-compliance issues if we notify somebody they will either modify their behavior or or cease sometimes people just don't realize that that it's not allowed And I also wanted to comment on the but are not limited to. We do occasionally have some kind of one-offs. Like we have a gentleman right now who had a grease truck coming to his home to service his food truck. That's a pretty unique scenario. It's obviously not something that most people would associate with a single-family residential neighborhood, but it's not common enough that it seemed appropriate to list it in the factors.

thanks for explaining that um but overall i think um where i'm at with all of these is i i think the the mo um and obviously there's three more speakers behind me so i'm i reserve the right to change my mind um but i think the my what i'm thinking in my mind for is the path forward is to recommend approval but I think that there's some notes to go back to stand to kind of tweak some of these things because I think there's too much to kind of redline some intent and he's and our city attorney is going to need to formulate pardon me formulate the language behind it but I think there's there's a couple clear changes that should get made um based on this, Commissioner, but we probably should, like you said, at least item E2 by itself, because that's where all the discussion's been so far.

I agree, and as I'm listening to this and we start to ask outside agencies to weigh in on what did you mean when you put this verbiage in there, maybe the option is And again, this is if the commission agrees with this, is that we table E2, only this item. We'll work with the other two that are more administratively. And we can go ahead and move those forward to the council. But to take this time to ask the staff, you've heard the discussion, and go back to the attorney. Do you use Stan's law firm for this, or do you use the consultants? that we've had before.

So we do use Stan. And I will say he's reviewed this exact red line before it was placed on this agenda. But we can certainly take the comments from the commission this evening back to him and say, can you help us with some revisions based on the concerns brought up at P&Z?

OK. With that in mind, I do want to get through the list of the folks that are patiently waiting to speak. So Commissioner Lice, do you have anything further? Okay, thank you very much. And then Commissioner Johnson.

Okay, so I'm going to go back to the first one. You did. Commissioner Scott address a little bit and I'm not even a medical professional but I thought medical professional was too not specific enough to what I felt the concerns were that it needed to be a doctor or something so I do appreciate you sending that forward to them because I don't think that we're there's other professionals medical professionals there's a lot you can have a nurse and that's the difficulty with potentially just that area

So I think we'll get some language from Dr. Scott. Yes. I also want to make sure that what we put in there, there are entities in the state of Texas that are regulating medical professionals, and we don't have the expertise to do that. So we're hoping to make sure this is written in a way that if we find out, if we're notified by some other agency, hey, this medical spa is not operating as it should, we can be a partner in whatever needs to happen, revoking a CO, getting them into compliance. But I want to make sure we're not setting the expectation that the city staff is going to be able to enforce or even know the regulations that these folks will need to operate under for the medical board and other, you know, maybe state regulating bodies, if that makes sense.

Yeah. I was just mostly supporting him on that because that was going to be my comment, or question at least. I guess mine was more a question. Now to get to what a lot of the conversation has been on the home occupation. I actually did not see it viewed like Commissioner Bresinger said. I see it more like Eric and Dr. Scott were talking about. If you look at the list that's in this, it's talking about cabinet repair, metalworking, auto. HVAC and plumbing, most people don't realize, it's not just getting in your truck and going away. It's not just setting appointments in your house. There's a lot of equipment and things that could potentially be stored in a driveway or on a driveway or other places if you allow the full operation. My brother is a master plumber and has had his own business, so it's more complicated than getting in your truck and just going and visiting a site. So I think that's what this is trying to address. It's in the same line that Auto Repair Shop is at, in metalworking, and I think that applies to HVAC, plumbing, and other medical supply and contracting businesses. You can have a contractor who's a contractor for building these homes that we have in front of us. They have more supplies and other things that are happening and going on than just making phone calls or getting into a vehicle. And I believe that's what this is addressing. So I don't have issues with listing those in the same line that we have other things that are being... listed in there, so that was going to be my comment. They kept going back and forth, but I do understand the potential for someone that's getting in their truck and going, even if they have just a one, right now they're just a one-man plumbing shop, but that's not what I think this is addressing here. I think that they're not going to have all this other going on, so I'm in support of what's written in here. Thank you.

Thanks. I have lost my cue on this electronic device, so is, who else would like to speak? I know there were two or three after.

I have one. Yeah. Mine is real quick. I liked Commissioner Lice's suggestion is that with the, this is not inclusive of clerical or administrative duties for any of these to somewhere in here is that it's okay to perform and to Dr. Scott's is I like the limiting the number of vehicles, right? Because down the street we have a landscape guy and on any given Friday, but I know it's he and his wife. So I know that the two cars that have their name are the two residents of the house. So I, you know, I think somehow if it's the number of cars or, you know, someone who doesn't know that is going to say, well, there are two cars in their driveway, so this must be a bigger business versus, you know, you're limited to the number of residents or number of something, right? So that way there's not 16 cars or 40, right? It's a husband and wife, and both of their cars have their business on it, but there's only two. So to your point of You know, I think it should, you know, your advertising or something should be. I thought it was interesting that in our UDC on that table, it does say that you can store things in your accessory building or garage, and that's today limited. So are we taking that out? Because I don't see that struck here, but in the table, Keller says it is allowed to store your equipment in your garage or ADU. I live on the edge of where North Richland Hills and Keller are down shady. And on any given Sunday, there'll be the little pink bakery sign on the Keller side of the street because it's probably not allowed on the North Richland Hills side of the street telling us that she's got her bakery open to come by for goods. So I thought it was interesting that North Richland Hills says that they can't, do that so she puts her sign on the Keller side of the street, which doesn't bother me. I think it's really nice that this, you know, she's got a gluten-free little bakery shop that on Sundays you can go get a bakery item. But are we planning on changing? I don't know if you've got that slide still up, but it was the slide where you had the five cities and it was in the last column. So accessory structures may be used for home. So does that mean?

We didn't propose any changes to that. The way that we generally handle storage on residential properties is that, you know, if it's wholly enclosed within the building, unless it's some sort of hazardous material or something, then we're kind of staying out of it. It's also not something that has been, other than the couple of egregious issues, most of the complaints about home occupations, there's lots of other things going on. It's not always that they can see everything in their garage. And let's be honest, there's lots of folks' garages across town that has all sorts of storage in it. So that's not usually the issue. It's some of the other traffic and the arrival of employees. We didn't propose a change to that, but we certainly can look at that.

It was just curious based on the conversation that we had about whether it's allowed or not allowed and, you know, how much are you storing or not storing. If I'm a one-man shop, I probably don't have millions of dollars of inventory. Right. And I'm only going to go buy the AC or whatever when that customer says it needs and I need to bring it in and then bring it back out. I didn't have a problem. I just wanted to make sure that we paid attention that it says that we may store things. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. Again, is there anybody else in the queue? Did I miss somebody that wants to speak? Well, I think we have a bit of a conundrum here in that E2, if we're going to wait for Dr. Scott, to send in his verbiage so that we can include that. That means we're in a delay. And I don't know how we could approve this without that particular language in front of us. And so, on the other hand, we could, with the first issue of eliminating that red line, HVAC, plumbing, and other mechanical supply and contracting businesses, that could be handled as an amendment, and then we would pass the item So because we have actually two sections to item E2 and we're dependent upon Dr. Scott sometime in the future to provide the verbiage, I don't know that we can necessarily pass it tonight. Thoughts on that? Can I make a suggestion?

Sure.

I think my perspective on what I think is most simple is we take an up or down vote on passing these as they are. knowing that it will be represented in the minutes and staff will let Stan know all of our comments. They've been taking notes. I think it's pretty clear in a couple of the tweaks. And then at least for council, then they'll have an idea of a recommendation on where we stand on each of these. Again, I think we can take three and four as a group because there's no discussion there. And I don't think Commissioner Scott's changes materially are going to change anything. I think he's providing clarifying language that I think is pretty agreeable to everyone. I would defer to him on any of the languages. What he said, I'm on board with. And I think it's just I think Ms. Hensley's suggestion is simply for the sake of time because this is not a work session. We're sitting at the dais like, hey, could you just send us the note and then we'll let Stan know and it'll go in the note. So my recommendation, if you agree with it, would be Let's just vote on E2 and then vote on E3 and 4 together. And I do think that the comments that are represented here, they're going to go to Stan. But we can up and down vote with what we have in front of us right now. OK. And just the last thing, that way we're not delaying the process of this getting implemented. There's a packet. Council can see them all together. And then I do think the only condition that makes sense is I would put in condition that there's an effective date, six months from approval, because I think that's a very good point, that if we're going to change regulations and the legality of a business, we should give people six months to comply.

We're happy to do that. I do want to clarify that this is different than a business becoming legal non-conforming. Legal non-conforming indicates at some point you had permission, you were permitted to do whatever you were doing. Stan's position has been if We have not authorized or entitled a particular home occupation, you know, pool company, landscape business, Ross's plumbing business. We're not taking some legal status away from them. I'm not opposed to the six-month at all. I'm just saying there's other things in state law where, and again, I'm going back to that 2024 UDC amendment, if you remember, we were required to send notifications to all of the businesses that were affected by that that were currently operating without an SUP. So some of the salons and barbershops that had been in town for decades, probably before that SUP requirement was in place, we had to send them a formal notification. This is a different scenario where, again, these home occupations, we don't have record of them, they don't have COs or permits in our system for operating that way. that process will look a little bit different than maybe a different type of code amendment you may have seen before.

For sure. And my only thought is that maybe three months is more appropriate just as like a complaint. I can just think of like the cottage bakery example from Commissioner Farner, like she finds out about it, like is she just not going to do this for four weeks until she can find somewhere else? Like let's give someone like that a little bit of grace to, okay, let's not cut off your income, but let's give you three months to find a solution because you can't be doing it here anymore.

It's just my thought I'm gonna ask Miss Hensley Given the discussion here and We have two things we could either vote up or down on this and then if you Come back with a updated version that takes in most of these points tonight Would that be easier to do than if we just table it for date certain to a meeting in the future. So it's kind of like, which would be easier for you? Can you bring this back at a drop of a hat as soon as you get the verbiage to where you think it includes most of the ideas that we've discussed here tonight?

I'm happy to do it either way. If you do a vote, this evening for a recommendation, it will move on to council, and it wouldn't come back to the commission other than an update on the final disposition. Also, perfectly happy to work with Stan on some edits and bring it back in a couple weeks or a month, whatever you want to table it to, and then move it forward to council. I think, you know, this is, it's a UDC amendment, so it's important, but it's not something that, um, is going to be a problem if we delay it for two weeks or four weeks or, you know, whatever. So staff is good either way.

It's going to be a problem either way. Okay, I heard that.

Okay, good.

All right, with that in mind, I see Commissioner Lice, you have a motion.

Yeah, I think, so make a motion to approve item E2, and with the condition that there's a three-month notice, a three-month period from what counsel's action to them taking effect. And I think just moving forward, I think, again, I think this body is actually pretty aligned to what we'd like to see. So I think it's going to be fairly simple for Stan to represent those changes. I don't think it needs to come back for us to vote on it again. So that's why I'd like to proceed. So that's my motion. Maybe it will get a second.

So your motion is to approve with a three-month... Notice that any affected business after this goes into effect?

So no notice because I don't think staff has the ability to go find out these people because they're undocumented home businesses. But a three-month, essentially a three-month clock before they come into effect, right? So if they're approved on August 1st, they would come into effect October 1st.

All right. And Commissioner Scott? Second. All right, we have a motion and a second to approve with a three-month time frame after approval by the council to let folks know. And with that, is there any further discussion? All right, let's go ahead and vote. All right, that motion passes 5 to 2. All right, let's move on to item E3. It's already been covered in the discussion by Ms. Helmsley. And we have closed the public hearing on it. So this is to consider a request to approve amendments to the Keller UDC adopting Ordinance 1746, which is basically the screening walls in town center. And with that, oh, you do wish to say, that'd be great. Go ahead.

No, just with all the discussion, a reminder that this item is related to the screening walls and then also the two uses changing from permitted by right to SUP and that's veterinarian clinics and kennels grooming only.

All right. So with that, Commissioner Lice, do we have, let me ask, is there anybody that wishes to speak on this before we ask for the motion? Commissioner Lice?

I move to approve, if it's in order, items E3 and E4. with the condition that there be a three month, that the EDC amendments go into effect three months from the date of council approval.

So I second, but I have a question. So those that change from permitted to SUP, will you have to notify anybody in Town Square that currently is in there that is animal related, that they are grandfathered and that they would, if they make any changes, have to come back for an SUP? We would, yes. I second.

OK. So you're saying those veterinarian services in town center, if we pass this, that with the added three months, that they would have three months to apply for an SUP for an existing business?

No. They don't have to do anything. They would just be considered legal nonconforming, but we would have to send them a notice before the council action, letting them know that that action was being proposed at a council meeting.

They just have to be notified, right?

They don't have to come in and apply for an SUP. They can continue operating. All right.

So they're grandfathered, but we're just going to notify them. Okay. So that was a second. So we've had a motion to approve with a second with a three-month notification process. Any further discussion? Yes, sir.

Thank you. I'm not sure that three months makes any sense in this case because there's no, the wall changed.

I'll withdraw that part of my motion if you're good with it before I vote. So yeah, just add, so item E, so the motion is item, or is items E3 and E4 as presented.

As presented. All right. And so we have both item E3 and E4 as presented. That's the motion. And we have a second.

Yes, sir.

Any further discussion? All right. Let's vote on that. Okay. That passes seven to zero. All right. That concludes our meeting that went a little bit longer than anticipated, and it's 8.37. So our meeting is adjourned. Thank you.